Electronic data retrieval is common task in almost all fields of endeavor. For certain types of data retrieval, such as image searching, existing solutions often lack the necessary efficacy to be truly effective.
For example, there may be instances when a user wants to search for an image, but does not know how to name the desired image and consequently does not know how to articulate a textual search query. In this situation, sketch-based retrieval provides a promising technique to search for image data. Sketch-based image retrieval allows a user to sketch some input, and based on the input, a set of matching images are returned. However, because this area is relatively new field, existing tools lack the ability to effectively interpret complex user inputs and return accurate results.